2.4 The Ruthven Inheritance

The pathology skills of Professor Litefoot and Dr Sacker are called upon by Lord Ruthven, who asks them to catalogue a cache of bones beneath his country estate. And so begins the endgame… as a plan long laid come to its glorious fruition.

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Styre
on April 17, 2017 at 8:30 PM

JAGO & LITEFOOT: THE RUTHVEN INHERITANCE

The second series of Jago & Litefoot winds up with “The Ruthven Inheritance” from Andy Lane, who wrote the conclusion of the first series as well. While I think both stories worked well, Lane needs to come up with a new idea for a series finale – this one also ends with the principal villain mutating into a giant monster and rampaging around until Jago and Litefoot defeat it in a cacophony of sound effects. Up until that point, the story is quite interesting – we meet Lord Ruthven (Simon Williams), a wealthy man dedicated to ruining the careers of both Jago and Litefoot. He’s also the result of centuries of directed evolution that have given him a powerful body with built-in defense mechanisms. That evolution has been directed by Gabriel Sanders, who bred the Ruthvens to be useful instruments in his quest to bring the world under vampiric thrall. The extent of his plan seems unclear to me, especially given how easily everyone involved is defeated, but as usual the story really isn’t about that. It’s about breaking the leads down to their lowest points, about taking away the things they love and seeing how they respond. And it works, but the idea is gone too soon. This would be an interesting backdrop for an entire series, not half of one story. Oh, and Ellie is cured at the end, which is another rapid close to a largely unexplored plot. I don’t see the point of restoring the status quo so quickly, not when at this point they already knew they were doing two more series. But the final twist is welcome, and I’m very interested to hear the dynamic of Jago and Litefoot and Leela.